[jltsiren]

But this was about Eostre. Whatever the name meant and wherever it came from, it was pretty clearly the origin of the word "Easter". And there is reasonable evidence of a Germanic goddess with a name something like Eostre or Ostara, related to various Indo-European dawn goddesses, such as Eos, Aurora, and Ushas.

[eitland]

You are watching this through English language glasses and it also seems you haven't thought this through:

In every European language I checked except German, Easter is named something completely different. Either something that sounds like it is inspired by Pesach (the Jewish passover) like our Norwegian or Danish Påske, Swedish Påsk, Dutch Pasen or something completely different.

Won't blame you, there is a lot of channels pushing nonsense about Christianity. That said, I recommend everyone who initially believed this to take a step back and reconsider sources that pushes ideas that falls flat the moment one looks at them :-)

[jltsiren]

More like through Finnish language glasses.

We were talking specifically about Easter, which is related to but also different from other Paschal traditions. For example, Finnish pääsiäinen was not a traditional spring festival, because it's too early for that. Our ancestors had their spring festivals in May, and the traditions now continue in other May festivals, such as May Day and Ascension Day.

[eitland]

> We were talking specifically about Easter, which is related to but also different from other Paschal traditions.

Here is from the top level comment in this thread:

> I find it odd how Easter, a pre-Christian Pagan festival (worshipping goddess of fertility: Eostre) has become seemingly-arbitrarily connected to the purported events at the end of Jesus' life..

They are clearly thinking about påske and (it seems to me) confusing the 2000 year old celebration (with even older Jewish roots) with this goddess that is only mentioned some 800 years after Christians started celebrating påske.

[elcritch]

While English “Easter” might’ve had some relation to a Germanic Eostre goddess, the much more clear relation for Christians would be for “austron” as the word for dawn, and the east, etc. Traditionally all churches faced east as Christian’s was supposed to return from the East like the sunrise:

> Old English Easterdæg, "Easter day," from Eastre (Northumbrian Eostre), from Proto-Germanic austron-, "dawn," also possibly the name of a goddess whose feast was celebrated in Eastermonað (the Anglo-Saxon month corresponding with April), from aust- "east, toward the sunrise" (compare east), from PIE root *aus- (1) "to shine," especially of the dawn.

However it’d be inaccurate to infer that Easter is a pagan holiday or something. Rather the medieval Christian missionaries were very adept at building on concepts and repurposing traditions from cultures to help relate the Gospel.

> Today, the problem of pagan parallels does not concern me at all. Here is why: First, even if parallels do exist between the myths of the gods and the resurrection of Jesus, that does not require us to reduce the resurrection to fiction. Such parallels might be—as [C. S.] Lewis observed decades ago—expressions of innate human longings for atonement and new life.

Assume for the sake of argument that Jesus was the incarnation of the immortal creator of the universe, then it would be natural that said creation would have echoes of this event and people would relate to them . It’d actually be a bit incoherent to not relate concepts of spring, renewal, sunrise, as very physical aspects of our human being to such a theology.

1: https://worldviewbulletin.substack.com/p/the-resurrection-an...

[anon291]

The 'evidence' of a Germanic goddess named Eostre comes from Christian writings who concede that this is where the name comes from. This entire 'conspiracy' is utterly made up

[jltsiren]

You need to look at the bigger picture.

The English word "east", and the equivalent words in most European languages, ultimately mean something related to the dawn or sunrise. There is plenty of evidence for various Indo-European dawn goddesses with names linguists generally consider related to Eostre.

Dawn goddesses were generally part of an older layer of mythology that became less relevant over time. They were often replaced with other deities that inherited some of their aspects, or they gained new aspects while keeping the name.

We know that both Old English and Old High German had one of the spring months named after something related to the east and/or dawn. We know that European agricultural societies tended to have spring festivals. We know that as Christinanity spread, it absorbed pagan festivals and pagan traditions, and sometimes even kept the names. Such as something similar to "Yule" instead of "Christmas" or "Navidad".

Maybe Anglo-Saxons never had a goddess specifically called Eostre, and maybe their spring festivals were not specifically about worshipping a particular god. But some European languages chose to use a Germanic name for the Paschal season, and that name seems to be connected to some pagan spring festivals. Whose names are ultimately related to a dawn goddess their distant ancestors worshipped.

[tptacek]

The Greek and Latin term for Easter is "Pascha". People are right to flag the noodling on the Germanic/English term as basically irrelevant.